Sundar Pichai says power of technology to help humanity drew him to Google

The Google CEO said the company is working on products that will help people's day-to-day problems.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was interacting with students during a Q&A session at the Sri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University, on Thursday, said that the ethos of using technology to help humanity is what drew him to Google.

Pichai was responding to a question on where he sees Google in the next 30 years. He said the company has always had ambitious missions such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Google is still working on products that solve problems that help people on a daily basis, he added.

Talking about the the public Wi-Fi project across 400 railway stations in country, he pointed out that "in India when you bring access to the Internet, it changes people's lives."

Pichai also seemed to be impressed by the start-up culture that is gaining momentum in the country and added that he does not see any difference between entrepreneurs in India and the Silicon Valley.

When asked about how Google plans to keep up with the changes, he said everything changes at a fast pace in technology and there is a need to keep reinventing to become relevant. He said that personal computers were just getting underway in the 1980s, while internet came a decade later and smartphones after another 10 years, when Android did not exist.

When asked about what he would have been doing if he was not the CEO of the search engine giant, Pichai said that he may have chosen cricket or football. However, he added that he would still be building software products.

Responding to why Google has never named Android after an Indian dessert, Pichai hinted the company may conduct an online poll while naming the next mobile OS version. The previous OS versions were named Marshmallow, Lollipop, Kitkat, etc.